


The Burden of Adrenaline

by unholygrass



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: BAMF Pidge | Katie Holt, Battle, Blood, Fear, Gen, Green Lion, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 00:29:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11771679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholygrass/pseuds/unholygrass
Summary: Pidge carries an injured Shiro out of a hostile situation using pure spite alone.





	The Burden of Adrenaline

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't been in the Voltron fandom for a few months now, but I got this sweet ass request so I went for it. This is short and sweet. One chapter. I've been obsessing over the marvel movies since seeing Spiderman Homecoming, so sorry about that. 
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I have not seen season 3. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ so don't be too upset if this isn't canon or something. Shiro's here. 
> 
> Also I haven't written in months and I did this at 2 am. It's more than a little rough. Sorry about that. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

Contrary to Lance's belief, Pidge is quite capable of lifting her body weight, a whole whopping ninety seven pounds of _pure muscle._

 

And bones.

 

Hunk says shes quite boney as well.

 

Nevertheless, she is strong enough to hoist her body up and over things with practiced ease, and she can do a total of eight pull-ups. Three more than her brother could do at her age. While to the others, these statistics didn't seem particularly spectacular, she was still rather proud of herself. A year previously, she couldn't even get a solid grip on the metal bar, and the idea of getting her chin over it was simply ridiculous.

 

Now however, she had been a paladin for seven months, floating around in the castle while piloting, rescuing, battling, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, and maneuvering herself in the vacuum of space.

 

She was the strongest now than she had ever been previously in her life.

 

However, she can only carry roughly one hundred pounds, while Hunk can carry roughly three hundred and fifty.

 

Allura has them all beat at seven hundred.

 

Nonetheless, Pidge was content with her ability and new-found vigor. She was the smallest, and her main advantage wasn't sheer strength anyway. She was agile and smart, and it didn't matter what her deadlift was so long as she could preform as a Paladin of Voltron.

 

At least she _used_ to think that, because now her lacking muscles were promising Shiro a rather early and untimely death.

 

“ _Please Shiro! God-_ Please wake up!” She was practically shrieking in his ear, her voice crackling as blood pooled in her mouth from where it was draining down from her nose. She shoved him again, hard enough that his head rolled limply to the side, but his eyes didn't so much as flutter. “ _Wake up!_ I can't-” She couldn't get them both out. They were trapped aboard a Galran cargo ship, pinned down by the fire of at least four hostile bodies. Every now and again, one of their lasers would skim across her shoulder and dig a deeper burn into her flight suit, reminding her just how utterly fucked they were. How was she supposed to get Shiro into her lion when she couldn't even sit up properly?

 

No one was coming to rescue them. She doesn't know what the hell happened to their communication lines, but she lost contact over four minutes ago.

 

Green was calling out to her, a frantic hum vibrating the back of her skull, right where her spine was attached to her neck. Her lion was practically screaming for her to get back, to board, to escape. Green was more than a machine- she was watching her paladin pinned down, constantly calculating the chances of Pidge's survival- and yet, set to stealth mode as she was, she could not override the command to stay hidden.

 

Pidge was unintentionally torturing her.

 

Another shot goes skimming over Pidge's head, a heat so hot landing on her neck that for a moment she fears that she's caught on fire, but the heat dissipates, and she knows that no, that shot was just a little too close for comfort.

 

She had to move. The sentries were going to come for them soon if she didn't retaliate and give them a reason to keep their distance.

 

“Okay- Okay. I'm going to give them something to shoot at. I'll be right back. Just- _fuck_ \- just stay alive okay?” It's weird talking to Shiro when he's completely unconscious, ( _Not dead. Not dead. Not dea-_ ) and she knows he probably can't hear her, but she's been following his orders for so long that it feels wrong not to tell him what she's up to.

 

She turns away from him and swallows down the feeling of betrayal such a simple action fills her with, and locates her attackers. She can only see four, but body tracker informs her that at least sixteen more are coming.

 

They have to be up and gone before they get there. She can take on four, but sixteen will probably do her in.

 

Using her sense of fear and anger at the situation as a personal sort of drug, she dashes out of their hiding place and launches her bayard at the ceiling, dropping behind the sentries before they even realize where she's gone. She throws a homemade grenade at one guard, who actually catches it in his surprise. She turns and wraps up two more in the wire of her bayard before activating its electricity and throws it like a Frisbee, watching as it clothes-lines the last man standing and continues its circumference all the way back to her hands.

 

Only then does she realize her grenade never went off, and she spins just in time to make one wide sweeping arch with her weapon and nearly beheads the remaining guard who had been in the process of sneaking up on her.

 

She's more angry that her grenade never went off. The previous six had- this one should have been _fine-_

 

She doesn't get to finish her thought before the stupid fucking thing explodes from where the Galran had dropped it, and she feels herself go slamming into the nearest wall from the force of the explosion. Her vision whites out for a minute or so, and she's confident that she's completely lost her hearing abilities for now, but everything else feels healthy enough, so she picks herself up from the ground and runs back to Shiro.

 

Only to find him dead to the word.

 

A sharper and much stronger fear curls in her stomach, and she knows that whatever is keeping him under is not a simple concussion from battle, but must be a much more dire injury, and the need to get him into her lion and into the healing chambers on the ship is much more pressing.

 

Plus those guards were still on the way.

 

God they're fucked.

 

Later that night when the others question her how the hell she managed it, she won't have a solid answer for them. Maybe it was the fear that Shiro was dying, or the dread of being captured. Maybe it was anger of what had been done to her friend, or maybe it was every single shred of spite she had in her body, but she dug her shoulders beneath Shiro's chest until she had his upper body draped across her back, and she wrapped her arms so tightly around his that she lost all sense of feeling in them from a lack of blood flow.

 

And she took a deep breath.

 

And she stood.

 

And stepped. And stepped. And stepped.

 

She thought of nothing but putting one foot in front of the other, and she kept her eyes firmly pinned on her feet as she watched them continue forward. Once she realized she could feel Shiro's heartbeat through her spine, she allowed herself to focus on that too.

 

When lasers started firing past her ears, and the thunder of footsteps became overwhelming, she centered in on that heartbeat, and the ground beneath her feet.

 

And she stepped.

 

And then- miraculously, she stepped onto her lion, and demanded Green get them the fuck out of there.

 

And when her knees gave out from under her and both she and Shiro went crumpling to the ground, she allowed herself to take the brunt of the fall lest he acquire more damage than he had already suffered through. She rolled him off of her and dared to glance at the windows, relief flooding through her bones so quickly as she saw the wide expanse of space that it worked like a drug, washing out every ache and hurt on her body. She sat up and dug her skinny fingers under Shiro's helmet to rest on his carotid, eyes closing as a familiar thumping beat drummed steadily enough for her to breathe again.

 

They had made it, and they were alive.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please Review!


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